Stewart Nozette, a
brilliant scientist whose work was instrumental in advancing the US
space program, was convicted last year of attempting to spy on
behalf of Israel, and this month was sentenced to 13 years in prison
and a substantial fine. Under investigation for over-charging the
government for various services performed by his nonprofit, Nozette
was found to be in possession of classified documents – and,
in the course of their inquiry, FBI agents discovered an email
written by him threatening to turn over classified information to the Israelis if the government pursued its fraud case.

In the indictment [.pdf],
prosecutors went out of their way to absolve the Israeli government
of any fault, since agents had snared their prey by conducting a
sting operation. Nozette was approached by an FBI agent who claimed
to be a Mossad agent, and asked to hand over classified documents in
return for money. As the prosecutors put it: “The indictment
does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on
its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.”

However, Nozette
worked as a consultant for Israel Aerospace Industries, an Israeli
government-funded company with strong links to Israeli intelligence,
from 1989 to 2009, during which time he had a “Q”
security clearance which gave him access to our most closely guarded
secrets. It’s worth noting that when the FBI agent
masquerading as an Israeli intelligence operative first approached
Nozette with the proposal that he work for the Mossad, the sneaky
space scientist replied: “I
thought I was working for you already,” and
said
he had handed over sensitive intelligence to the Israelis in the
past.

Israeli spying in the
US is a topic the government, and the news media, don’t like
to talk about, and yet the GAO has stated [.pdf] the Israelis run the “most
aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US
ally” and that “classified military information and
sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the
intelligence agencies of this country.”

In
view of this, a new
Wired
report that Israeli companies
are a key link in the government’s top secret high-tech spying
operation, code-named “Stellar Wind,” is sure to raise
eyebrows. Intelligence expert James Bamford relates:

“In
addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running
the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and
little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the
entire U.S. telecommunications network. According to a former
Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint,
owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at
Verizon, which I first reported in my book The
Shadow Factory in 2008.
Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it
does not comment on such matters.

“At
AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered
by software and hardware from Narus,
now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T
whistleblower Mark Klein
in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment. What is
especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties
to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence
service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on
the U.S.”

Paranoia? Anti-Israel
Derangement Syndrome? After all, Israel is one of our closest
allies – right? Why should we be leery of out-sourcing intelligence-gathering to them? But it isn’t paranoia, as
Bamford goes on to relate:

“In fact,
according to [former National Security Agency official Bill] Binney,
the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had
developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping
operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee,
apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a
technical director in the Operations Directorate, ‘who was a
very strong supporter of Israel,’ said Binney, ‘gave,
unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these
fast rates, to the Israelis.’”

There has been no
prosecution, and this incident has never been made public: why is
that? If someone high up in the NSA has been handing over sensitive
technology to a foreign government, doesn’t this qualify as a
criminal act – or even news? Yet this is the first anyone has
heard of it.

According
to Bamford, Binney suspects “Israeli intelligence in turn
passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in
countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the
companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass
critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them.
‘And
then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus
device,’ he said. ‘I think there’s a connection
there, we don’t know for sure.’”

Don’t we? All’s
fair in love, war, and espionage – which is nothing but war
conducted covertly.

When
we unpack the boxes within boxes within boxes of Israeli front
companies, we find the foot soldiers of Israel’s undercover
army inside an electronic Trojan horse. Narus, an Israeli company
which boasts its spying capabilities are second to none, has had a
working relationship with Israeli intelligence, according
to founder and
former chairman Ori Cohen. Another Narus founder, chief technology
officer Stanislav Khirman, previously worked for our old friend,
Israel Aerospace Industries – the company Nozette assumed was
a Mossad front.

Verint,
formerly Comverse/Infosys, is another familiarname
to longtime readers
of this column. Back in 2001, Carl Cameron of Fox News reported
Israeli agents in the US had been tracking Mohammed Atta and his
terrorist team prior to the 9/11 attacks, and may have had
foreknowledge of the event. One
leg of this
steadfastly ignored four-part series detailed
the Israeli government’s intimate connection to a company with
the exclusive contract to work on the technical aspects of our
eavesdropping operations: Comverse-Infosys, now
known as Verint.

Verint makes
customized computers and software designed to cut into the system of
circuits and switches that make up the nation’s phone system in
order to capture, store, and record wiretapped conversations,
simultaneously sending them to government agents. The problem,
however, is that the producers of this valuable tool have constant
access to the computers and the information contained therein for
“maintenance” purposes. This amounts to what many in law
enforcement regard as a “back door” left wide open. What
this means, in practice, is that the entire system has been
compromised, as a letter from 15 law enforcement officials to
then-Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted. Cameron concluded his report with these words:

“What
troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the
counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is
that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap
and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes.
They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly
secret wiretaps went into place.”

Fox News has never
retracted this story, which was broadcast in the first half of
December, 2001. Although the smoke had barely cleared from the skies
over Manhattan, they erased it from their web site three days after
its release. A few honestjournalists [.pdf] followed up the story, but it
soon went down the Memory Hole and was never heard from again –
until now, when a tentacle of the octopus surfaces for a moment,
only to sink back down into the miasma of major media indifference,
and official complicity.

The implications of
this story – the pervasive penetration of America’s
secure communications networks by Israeli intelligence and a
possible connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – are too
hot to handle for the “mainstream” news media. Indeed,
even reportage on matters such as Nozette’s trial is rare to
nonexistent: we only heard about the duplicitous space scientist on
two occasions – when he was arrested, and when he was sentenced.

Appended to most of
these stories was the prosecutors’ contention that the Israeli
government was not in any way involved. Nozette’s long
association with a “company,” Israel Aerospace, that for
all practical purposes is an adjunct of the Israeli government,
makes nonsense of this claim, as does Nozette’s surprise at
being double-recruited by the Mossad. “I thought I was working
for you already”!

Why is the government
not prosecuting whoever handed the NSA’s software over to the
Israelis? Why does Washington deny or deflect all questions dealing
with Israel’s extensive covert operations in the US?

When it came to light the FBI had issued a memo instructing local offices to conductsurveillance on Antiwar.com and its employees, the item that
brought us to their attention and caused so much ire on their part
revolved around this issue of the Israeli connection to the events of
9/11. While we are still going through the long and involved legal
process of discovering just what the extent of that surveillance
was, what is clear at this point is the peculiar sensitivity of
the authorities whenever this subject comes up. It is as if someone
had probed an old injury, or subjected them to an electric shock:
the response is automatic and emphatic.

What are they so
afraid of?

No, it’s not the
vaunted power of the Israel lobby, or, at least, not only that.
After all, what we’re talking about here is an Israeli “back
door” into our most sensitive government communications, a
penetration so complete that it places the security of the nation in
mortal danger – and puts the privacy and civil liberties of
all US citizens at risk. In Britain, they are proposing legislation that would allow real-time snooping on every sort of communication
device, giving the government access to everyone’s phone
conversations, emails, and web-surfing habits. We have the
technology to do this, and no doubt are already doing it: that’s
what operation “Stellar Wind” is all about.

If the Israelis have
access to this comprehensive monitoring system, via an electronic
“back door,” this means personal information could be
readily passed around and used to discredit Israel’s perceived
enemies in the US. Can fear be a big part of the explanation for the free pass
given to Israel’s covert activities – fear of blackmail?

Oh, so you’re a
vocal opponent of Israel’s policies in Palestine? Listen
buddy, do we have a thick dossier on you! You’d better
shut up – or else. What will your wife say when she sees that email – complete with lurid attachment – you sent the other night?

It’s the alleged
function of government to protect us from foreign invaders, bad guys
from overseas who would do us harm. In this instance, however, they
haven’t just failed – they’ve shirked their sworn
duty. This may be one of the biggest stories since September 11,
2001 – which is why you won’t hear a word about it from
the legacy media and their online imitators. Kudos to Wired for
breaking this latest aspect of an ongoing story. How long, I wonder,
before they’re darkly accused of spreading pernicious
“conspiracy theories”? Place your bets below, in the
comments section.

201203953122 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fjustin%2F2012%2F04%2F03%2Fspying-on-the-spies%2FSpying+on+the+Spies2012-04-04+06%3A00%3A48Justin+Raimondohttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012039531 to “Spying on the Spies”

My bet would be that Wired is already 'wired' into the Israeli network. Smoke, mirrors, tricks, obfuscation, and round and round she goes. The minions in service to Babylon-On-The-Potomac and/or Israel, are riding the old carousel to fame and treasonous fortune. For whatever nonsensical reason.

NBC reported tonight Romney trails Obama by 20 points among women in twelve key battle ground states and is even with men. You were right about Romney not being a formidable candidate. My head is so into the Walker recall here in Wisconsin that I have ignored the recent national polls.

What, another israeli-owned corporation is just a front for the israeli paranoid "security" system? Who would have thought? Obviously not our government that loves doing business with israeli spies. One can "understand" when whorish politicians sell their soul to aipac but it is so much more troubling when government intelligence/security institutions pander and show submission to israel. Why- one has to ask? What's in it for the the entire security apparatus to cover up israeli spying not just on the US government anymore, but now on the American people? To cover up israel's hijacking of the giant illegal US wiretapping eavesdropping system? And why do the israelis want to know everything that American's communicate to begin with?

Raimondo gives the troubling answer. To silence criticism of israel. Together with israel's other strategic prong- to penalize dissent (conveniently labeled antisemitism or terrorism), we're in a world of trouble. How long before israel hijacks through the backdoor or frontdoor our militarized local law enforcement for their purposes? Not happy about israel spying on the US? Next thing you know, your friendly local law enforcement launches one of those hometown night raids/ "wrong address" no questions asked-kill everyone inside operations.

The days of Internet freedom are well over. The internet 2.0 turned out to be a way for governments around the world to know everything about you- your finances, your predilections of all sorts, your habits, your opinions. They have managed stifle even freedom of speech on the Internet, something initially thought to be impossible. Am I the only one who thinks that eventually critics of the establishment and of certain foreign countries will be left with no option but to go dark, to disconnect…

After an announcement yesterday, I am somewhat surprised not to see at least Boston papers running with a recent sting which nabbed an Israeli physics researcher from MIT who had a penchant for underaged females. Why, I wonder, were they simply not willing to seize his computers long ago when they said he frequented kiddie porn sites? No, instead he was set up with a honey trap you might say, in which he was going to visit a woman for a four-way to include her underage daughters. Only "she" was an FBI agent and he is now in custody. I'll be interested to see if his real threat to the US was pedophilia or something to do with the cutting edge physics he and his colleagues were pursuing, along with his location at the heart of an institution with some interesting cross currents (not long ago, for instance, an Islamic librarian fell in front of a train).

Too bad America doesn't see it's favorite ally as the only real enemy that it is.

The problem is when the US establishment sees the American people as the enemy. And when foreign nations think they can operate in some other country with impunity. Are we going to see mossad-in-Iran type attacks in America? People mysteriously dying in our own country because they didn't express their unconditional love and support for everything israel does?

I think our local police, and more importantly the citizenry they are paid to protect, would be better served by those cops watching old episodes of 'The Andy Griffith Show' instead of flying halfway around the world for goon squad lessons from the masters.

Regarding IAI: Yosef Yagur worked there in the 1970's – he was Jonathan Pollard's handler. Yagur also was the handler at the same time for Ben-Ami Kadish. Kadish was arrested in 2008 for passing secrets back in early 80's and was only given a fine!! The judge was incredulous.

Regarding some other Israel-connected agents:

Ben-Ami Kadish – as above

Richard Kelly Smyth – illegally exported nuclear switches in 1984 to Israel. Arrested but fled. Recaptured in 2001 and was sentenced to 3.5 yrs but was immediately paroled!

Yehuda Abraham – provided money transfer for surface-to-air missile sale to Pakistani terrorists. Got a sentence of 2 years probation although he explicitly promised no cooperation. Was also named in report on Viktor Bout dealings.

Rosen and Weissman – who received Larry Franklin's secrets. Weren't prosecuted partly because court ruling allowed Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley to be called to testify for the defense.

[…] Israeli spying in the US is a topic the government, and the news media, don’t like to talk about, and yet the GAO has stated the Israelis run the “most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally” and that “classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country.” In view of this, a new Wired report that Israeli companies are a key link in the government’s top secret high-tech spying operation, code-named “Stellar Wind,” is sure to raise eyebrows. Intelligence expert James Bamford relates. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/04/03/spying-on-the-spies/ […]

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].